The Apostle Paul

I have kept the faith. That's what the apostle Paul says to me, a man who kept the faith, in spite of every single terrifying thing that the world could throw at him, look into the center. The issue of Renewing Your Mind on the web and we would graduate as the billions we continued our jerseys, groceries, great men and women of the Bible. Today were going to consider the apostle Paul superlatives about the source he describes the man who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was much of the theological framework that was taught from the pulpits of faithful churches today. There's no one who has ever surpassed Paul. Paul is the theologian par excellence of Christendom.

No theologians writings have ever been studied as thoroughly and so meticulously and so devotional late as have the writings of the apostle Paul. 13 books of the New Testament are attributed to his pen and his writings are not only profound and intellectually stimulating, but there is a personal warmth-pastoral heart that comes through those writings again and again and again and one of the things I like about Paul is his humanness is that his human feelings his aspirations, his fears the things that irritate him. All of that comes through the pages of his writings. You know the basic background of his story how this man started out his life as a scholar. He was a student in Jerusalem where he studied at the feet of Galileo and Galileo in the first century was the leading Jewish rabbi in the world and one of the top three or four rabbis in all of Jewish history and Paul was his prized student.

It's been said of the apostle Paul that by the time he was 21 years old.

He had to PhD's and that before he was converted to Christianity.

He was the most educated Jew in Palestine, apart from Jesus. I don't know any single individual was had a greater impact than shaping Western civilization than Saul of Tarsus, so a man that formidable a man that significant is a man that is worthy of our attention not only attention to his teaching, but attention to his person.

Now, in all of his writings, there is a portion of one chapter that contains the greatest amount of biographical data that we find in the New Testament, and that chapter is the 11th chapter of his second letter to the church at Corinth and I want to spend a few minutes today looking at some of the things that Paul says about himself and about his life in the 11th chapter of second Corinthians before I give an exposition of this chapter.

Let me preface it by saying in this chapter we find Paul uncharacteristically personally upset. He has been provoked and annoyed. He's upset with what's going on in the Corinthian community. We know that he wrote that will earn first letter to the Corinthian church and the people did not respond in a way that was favorable, and the bickering and the fighting continued to go on and people were challenging Paul's authority as the apostle to the Gentiles. And we know he went through three arduous missionary journeys, and wherever he went he would establish churches and the people loved him, but as soon as he go on to the next church somebody would come into those churches and begin to stir up trouble and begin to attack Paul and undermine his authority and that happened in spades at cornets and so finally Paul responds to all of this and I'll just beginning the first verse of chapter 11 skip down. Would to God you couldn't bear with me little in my family, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy, for I have aspires you to one husband, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. If ever there was a man who had a pastor's heart for his people. It was Paul. Even when he rebuked them.

Even when he admonished them. You could feel the tears that he was experiencing.

He loved those people he cared about those people.

He was jealous, for there will be. And now he's tried everything to get the situation in Corinth straightened out and he said let me act like a fool for a minute and then he said, you seem to suffer fools gladly anyway but still our prairies and listening to all his foolishness and your measuring and foolishness and if that's the only thing that you can respond to his foolishness. Let me be foolish to let me play the role of the firm for a moment let's jumped on to verse 16 I say again, let no man think me a fool if otherwise yet is a fool receive me, but I may boast myself a little bit and this is why I like this chapter so much is that there is a sense in which all protocol is stripped away all of the normal canons and standards of of discussing oneself are removed impulsive.

Paul doesn't brag he doesn't boast, but they force them to, they push into it is okay if you want to be up for our beautiful if you want me to remind you of my credentials let me do it. Saying that many of you Gloria after the flesh I will glory as well for you.

Suffer fools gladly saying that you yourselves are wise. Now I speak concerning reproach as though we had been weak. However, whensoever any, is bold that he says impresses I speak foolishly I am bold the you think some of your people are coming in and trying to take over the church are bold, your following them because you think they're courageous to give you a lesson.

Encourage let me give you a lesson in boldness. Let me give you a lesson in what it means to participate in the sacrifices of leadership for the sake of the church. When we talk turkey to you for second. Are they Hebrews soma are they Israelites saw my are they the seed of Abraham saw my are they ministers of Christ.

I speak as a fool. No, I am more only just pause here. This sounds like an exercise in foolish egotism on the Paul is writing in a self-serving style. But remember, this is the same apostle who, under the inspiration of God, the Holy Spirit sat down as a rule for the church that we ought not to think more highly of ourselves than we truly are and that we should think soberly, making an accurate evaluation of our character are abilities are gifts are achievements, not in that exhortation, the Paul gives elsewhere where he calls us to make a sober analysis.

He speaks very strongly against idle foolish boasting.

Yet at the same time. His comments teach us that we ought not to be indulged in false humility where we underestimate the gifts that God is given us arrogance and pride happen when we overestimate our abilities, but it's also sortable flipside of pride or something distorted about underestimating and so now Paul says he speaking foolishly. But even though he says that parenthetically he is speaking accurately everything that he says about himself. Here is true. Are they ministers so am I more so in laborers more abundant. Okay. Item number one.

I have worked harder than any minister in the church.

Nobody ever worked harder for the kingdom of God and for Jesus Christ than the apostle Paul in laborers more abundant in stripes above measure. The thing is so amazing to me about Paul is not only his intellectual strength, but from everything that we can read in antiquity to describe the physical characteristics of Paul say that he was a short man take comfort. He was short all great mentors that he was short and that he was sort of slight of build, wiry, and he had frailties, physical infirmities, bad eyesight and things like that.

The plague him throughout his life but was he not only was his head strong.

If you want to see the kind of physical strength.

Paul had all you had to do was ask him take off his shirt. I doubt if there was a single square inch on the apostle Paul's back. That was not scar tissue. His back would've looked like a roadmap in stripes with out major from the lash in prisons, more frequent. I had it up best that I would splinter on the other day and we added up, and we been spent 233 nights this past year away from our house and that seems like something until you think. Not one of them was in jail. Every night that I spent away from my house this year, I spent in a comfortable bed with nice amenities, nice food, everything that you could ask for Paul practically had a permanent address in prison.

He knew the inside of practically every prison in Asia minor. Not to mention impulsive imprison more frequent in deaths often let me get specific. He saying here of the Jews five times received by 40 stripes save 15 times. He got the maximum lashing 39 lashes.

It's difficult for us to understand but there were many many many many people who died from 39 lashes. Paul had it five times, that is 195 times that lash with metal and jagged edges on the end bit in his back three times I was beaten with rods. So not only did he get the lash five times but he got the rod the heavy stick same kind of beating were worse than he had with the last. So that's eight times he went through that once I was stoned how many people do we read about in the ancient world who write about telling us the fact that they were stone, testimony or survive the day of people who were stone. This is the only one I know why because it was a method of execution is like Paul said once I went to the electric chair for once I was on her once I went to the gas chamber that was capital punishment. And when people were stoned, they were stoned to death and being stoned to death was bright like being killed and into the time where everybody just pummeled you with rocks until your head was gashed open and her face was turned into mush and your body was just lacerated from head to toe, and they didn't just throw stones at somebody and run.

They made sure they were dead. So that means probably that they try to find a pulse on the apostle Paul in a heartbeat, and they couldn't. He was stoned the within a millimeter of death three times I suffered shipwreck right eight meetings one stoning three shipwrecks. How many times would I have to be beaten and stoned and shipwrecked before I would start: of a little bit with my teaching a night and a day I have been in the deep that is the shipwrecks he's left in the water all night long hanging on the flotsam and jetsam. Whatever treading water all night. This is a night and a day and a life raft.

This is a night and a day in the water, clinging to something for life all night and all day romance thoughts was in the middle of the city hanging onto a piece of wood in the darkness in journeying's often in terms of robbers and parents by my own countrymen in Paris by the heathen in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea in perils among false brethren.

We ask you this one was to apostle Paul. Safe malware in the city in the country in the wilderness he would stop at a night in and in.

He didn't know whether he would be alive the next morning in weariness and pain fullness. We can rush over the quick. It is hard to be a saint when you're tired and it is hard to be a saint when you hurt, but this is his life in weariness and pain fullness in watching's often in hunger and thirst in fasting's often in cold and nakedness besides those things that are without that which comes upon me daily.

The care of all the churches is a concluding unscientific postscript. I've talked to three ministers in the last three weeks who have come that close to leaving the ministry because they can't stand the pressure, the bickering and the people down on them and all that goes with trying to keep a congregation of people happy. That is no small task. In this day and age. How many churches we call a pastor I being the pastor of all the churches oppose Bastrop was enough to drive any man in the grave without ever being in jail without ever being beaten without ever being shipwreck without ever bring arrested writing these things, but he said keep in mind the daily care of all the churches who is weak and I am not weak who is offended and I burn not if I have to boast I will boast of the things that concern my infirmities to God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever knows that I lie not Paul uses the solemn form of the oath here to verify that every single thing he is just said about himself is the truth before God.

In Damascus the governor under Eratosthenes came The city of the Damas scenes with the garrison desires to apprehend the and through our window in a basket was. I let down by the wall and escaped his hands and then he goes on, he talks about fighting with the wild beasts of Ephesus, and so on.

And we could go on all day with the trials and tribulations of the apostle Paul know this question I have for you. How could any man do it and keep doing it all the way to Rome where his final destiny was to go into the square and to put his head on a block and have a man pick up the sword and cut off his that's how he died faithful to the very end, and he knew he was going to die like that and knowing that he was going to die like that.

He's spending his time comforting his friends.

He says the Timothy. I have fought the good fight of the faith I have run the race I've kept the faith. I have kept the faith.

That's what the apostle Paul says to me, a man who kept the faith, in spite of every single terrifying thing that the world could throw at him. He kept the faith.

He finished the race this is. I forget those things that are behind, and I look forward to that which is ahead. And I counted again to die.

Who wouldn't, gained.with a life like that, but again my question is what made it possible for him to do that this man every time he stood before kings every time he had a chance to explain himself. He spoke about the same thing. He kept going back to one pregnant moment in his life when he was on the road to Damascus, filled with fury and vehemence against the early church hostile militant against the Christian community and he says what he says to the king and King at midday. I was blinded by this light and I was thrown to the ground and I heard a very speaking to me in my own tong in a Bruce I saw Saul, why persecutors lame and I said who is it will be said, it is Jesus whom thou persecuted always before King Agrippa. He makes this statement after he's finished his biography. He said okay.

I was not disobedient to my heavenly vision at least once a week I have to force myself to think back to the day of my conversion to remember what God has done for me. We all need to do that and we need the grace the persevering grace to be obedient to the vision that God has given us so that we can say I have Whole system is a man who The missionary William Carey once said, expect great things from God and attempt great things for God can't help but wonder if he was thinking about the apostle Paul when he made that bold statement to these messages from Dr. RC Sproul series great men and women of the Bible and we invite you to return each Saturday as we work our way through the series you're listening to Renewing Your Mind. We are the listener supported outreach of Luger ministries. We depend on the generous financial gifts of people like you and for your gift of any amount today would like to send you just to glory.

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